Recordare: A Renaissance Portrait of Remembrance and Loss. King Solomon s Singers present

Transcription

1 King Solomon s Singers present Recordare: A Renaissance Portrait of Remembrance and Loss Tuesday, July 29, 7:30PM Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, Chicago

2 RECORDARE: A RENAISSANCE PORTRAIT OF REMEMBRANCE AND LOSS Introit: Requiem aeternam, from Officium Defunctorum Tomás Luis de Victoria ( ) Kyrie eleison from Officium Defunctorum Absalon fili mi INTERMISSION Sanctus and Benedictus from Officium Defunctorum Agnus Dei from Officium Defunctorum Victoria Josquin Desprez ( ) or Pierre de la Rue ( ) Victoria Victoria Versa est in luctum Alonso Lobo ( ) Responsorium: Libera me from Officium Defunctorum Victoria Innsbruck, ich muß dich lassen Heinrich Isaac (ca ) Le souvenir de vous me tue Robert Morton (ca ) Lamentations I Thomas Tallis ( ) Ne irascaris Domine / Civitas sancti tui William Byrd ( ) Si bona suscepimus Leonhard Lechner ( ) NOTES ON THE PROGRAM One hundred years ago yesterday, on July 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip fired two shots into a motorcar carrying the Archduke of Austria and his wife, killing them both and starting in motion a chain of events that would lead to the outbreak of what was variously known as The World War, The Great War, The War to End All Wars, and The European War, but which we now know as World War I. By the time the Armistice of Compiègne was signed on November 11, 1918, an estimated 10 million soldiers and seven million civilians had died, and the world was a fundamentally different place, both politically and psychologically, than it had been a few short years earlier. Rockefeller Memorial Chapel is the spiritual and ceremonial center of the University of Chicago, and a plaque hangs in the Chapel memorializing the men of the University that died in World War I. As part of a week of activities at the Chapel commemorating the outbreak of that war and remembering the fallen, King Solomon s Singers offer this concert as a reflection on the more general topic of war and its effects on individuals and communities. The particular lens through which we view this topic is that of Renaissance choral music. At first glance, the circumstances of the Renaissance era may seem distant from, even irrelevant to, the concerns of the early 20th century; for better or for worse, however, the effects of war on individual human beings and their communities separation, fear, loss, and of course death have not materially changed in hundreds or even thousands of years. These themes are probably as old as humankind itself, and the composers of the Renaissance knew them well and expressed the attendant emotions in a deeply expressive yet controlled manner that is appropriate for the commemorative nature of this week s events.

3 Tonight s concert is composed of two distinct halves, in which different aspects of the effects of war are explored. The first half of the concert is specifically a prayer for the dead, and its structure closely follows that of a Requiem mass. The second half of the concert explores more diverse themes: we hear the pain of separation from both sides of the story the reluctant leave-taker and the mournfully abandoned we hear laments for the desolation of a land and a people, and we hear the stoic acceptance of fate, no matter how terrible. The centerpiece of the first half of this evening s program is Tomás Luis de Victoria s Officium Defunctorum, or Office of the Dead, for six voice parts. The work is often referred to as Victoria s Requiem, and indeed it contains settings of all the movements of the Requiem mass; however, it also includes music that would have been sung during other parts of the funeral rite, including the burial service. Tonight we will sing five movements of the Officium Defunctorum: four from the Requiem mass: the Introit, Kyrie, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei; and one, the Responsory, from the burial service. All of the movements except the Kyrie intersperse chant and polyphony in the so-called alternatim style, with the chant melody being carried by one of the six voices through the polyphony as a cantus firmus. This is typical of Requiem masses of the period in particular, Victoria s setting closely follows that of his Spanish predecessor Cristóbal de Morales and may well be a conscious attempt on the composer s part to connect to earlier, simpler versions of the Office of the Dead in which the sacred texts were chanted by monks, monophonically in responsorial form. Interestingly, Victoria generally places the cantus firmus in the Soprano II part (it is most often found in the Tenor), and most editors infer from this that the chant incipits should also be in that voice, a convention we follow in this performance. This work is well-known and loved for its long, flowing vocal lines and gorgeous sonorities, qualities which can be dangerous for performers and listeners, potentially turning the work into a wall of beautiful sound with no meaning behind it. If Victoria s immense skill in text setting and counterpoint is respected, this danger is eminently avoidable: each vocal line has an obvious destination both alone and in the context of the other polyphonic voices and the swell and ebb of volume, pitch, and harmonic tension are always in service of the most important element of the composition: the sacred text. When Victoria wrote this piece, he was employed as chaplain at the Clarist Convent of Las Descalzas Reales in Madrid, where his patron, Maria, the Holy Roman Empress and Archduchess of Austria lived. Maria died in 1603, and Victoria composed the Officium Defunctorum for her funeral service. Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, Gavrilo Princip s shooting victims in July, 1914, were heirs to the titles borne by Maria and her husband Maximilian II, and Franz Ferdinand was a direct descendant of Maximilian s brother, Charles II. Interspersed among the movements of the Officium Defunctorum are two motets: Josquin Desprez s (or Pierre de la Rue s) Absalon fili mi and Alonso Lobo s Versa est in luctum. The setting of King David s lament on the death of his son Absalom is the only explicitly war-related work on our program. The full story of Absalom is rich and complex, recalling or prefiguring themes as diverse as Lucifer s fall from grace and Freud s Oedipal impulse, but the final chapter is a simple and straightforward outpouring of grief from a father over his son fallen in battle. Scholars are still divided over who wrote this work the current top combatants are Josquin and La Rue, but others have been in the ring at times, including Heinrich Isaac but questions of attribution fade to the background when we hear the piece, with its rich sonorities and surprising harmonic shifts perfectly capturing the wild grief of the Old Testament king. The funeral motet Versa est in luctum is part of the Office of the Dead, and Victoria included a setting of it in his Officium Defunctorum. However, the setting by Victoria s countryman, contemporary, and friend is equal in contrapuntal skill and emotional power, and it is performed far less frequently. Lobo actually composed his setting five years earlier than Victoria s, for the funeral of Philip II of Spain, the brother of Victoria s patron Maria. We begin the second half of our program with two secular songs of departure and separation: Heinrich Isaac s Innsbruck, ich muß dich lassen and Robert Morton s Le souvenir de vous me tue. In the text to Innsbruck, Isaac s most famous composition, the narrator, forced to leave home by an unknown circumstance, laments the upcoming separation from his love, gives a vow of fidelity, and asks for one in return. This is a situation known to every culture and every era in which soldiers have been sent off to fight or civilians forced to flee their homes, and we know that the story rarely ends well. And though the departure from Innsbruck that inspired this song was not war-related, Isaac did experience exile and dislocation later in his life, when he was forced to flee his adopted home of Florence during the conflict between his patrons the Medici family and the monk Savonarola. The other side of this story of separation is told in the chanson by Morton, the earliest composer on our program and an Englishman who worked at the Burgundian court of Philip the Good. In this piece, the narrator is the person left at home, pining and waiting for the return of the beloved. These two songs end with the

4 parallel texts: bis daß ich wiederkomm and jusques a vostre revenue, i.e., until I return and until your return, but neither narrator seems particularly confident that this happy ending will come to pass. We return to sacred text settings for the last three pieces on the program. First we hear two settings of Old Testament lamentations for the desolation of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile, both by Catholic composers living in newly Protestant England: Thomas Tallis s setting of the first two verses of the Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah and William Byrd s two-part motet Ne irascaris Domine / Civitas sancti tui. The Lamentations are part of the liturgy of Lent and Holy Week, but the imagery of the desolation of the Holy City and the admonition: Jerusalem convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum ( Jerusalem, return unto the Lord thy God ) must have had special significance for a Catholic living in a land where his Church had fallen, and his faith was outlawed. Tallis draws out the bitterness and sorrow of the text superbly with the dissonance and false relations of the beginning and middle sections, and by the soft, homophonic plea of Jerusalem convertere at the close. Similarly, no understanding of Latin is needed to grasp the meaning of Byrd s two-part motet Ne irascaris Domine / Civitas sancti tui; the music is heartbreakingly sad. The prima pars allows a moment or two of chromatic insistence on the text Ecce respice ( Behold, look upon us ) but immediately regrets its temerity. As in Tallis s Lamentations, a sudden shift to homophonic writing gives stylistic contrast and highlights the key thought: Sion deserta facta est. This is followed by one of Byrd s great musical images: on the text Jerusalem desolata est, the five voices take turns wandering over the same musical terrain, never seeming to arrive; the bass in particular starts the same passage five times over before the final cadence. Driven by conflict to a foreign land, the tribes of Israel wander in the desert, seemingly never to return home. We conclude this evening s program with a statement of, if not hope, at least acceptance: Leonhard Lechner s setting of text from the Book of Job, Si bona suscepimus. This motet is in two parts, both of which end with the text: Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit; sicut Domino placuit, ita factum est: sit nomen Domini benedictum, or: The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away: as it has pleased the Lord, so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord. In case this does not deliver the message clearly enough, the second soprano voice is devoted entirely to an ostinato setting of one line of text: Fiat voluntas Domini or the Lord s will be done. (This was the motto of the Nuremberg alderman Joachim Bömer, to whom the motet is believed to be dedicated.) The opening words of the second part of this work ( Nudus egressus sum de utero matris mei, et nudus revertar illuc, or naked came I out of my mother s womb, and naked shall I return there ) provide a stark but fitting summation to our exploration of the human costs of war, as well as a useful reminder to those who feel their worldly ambitions and grievances are worthy of such costs. Tom Crawford, July 2014 References: Grove Music Online; Konrad Ameln, ed., Leonhard Lechner, Werke, Band 6: Sacrarum Cantionum quinque et sex vocum, Liber secundus, Bärenreiter, 1982; Nigel Davison, Absalom Fili Mi Reconsidered, Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, 1996; Jon Dixon, ed., Tomás Luis de Victoria, Masses, Volume 12: Requiem Mass for six voices and settings for the Office of the Dead, JOED, 1994; Wikipedia. Cover image: David mourning the death of his son Absalom, from the Book of Hours of Louis d Orléans, Jean-Louis Colombe, 1469.

5 TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS Tomás Luis de Victoria: Introit: Requiem aeternam from Officium Defunctorum Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Te decet hymnus Deus in Sion, et tibi reddetur votum in Jerusalem: Exaudi orationem meam; ad te omnis caro veniet. Victoria: Kyrie eleison from Officium Defunctorum Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison. Give them eternal rest, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine on them. There will be songs of praise to you in Zion, and prayers in Jerusalem. O hear my prayers; all flesh returns to you. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. Josquin Desprez or Pierre de la Rue: Absalon fili mi Absalon fili mi, Quis det ut moriar pro te, fili mi, Absalon? Non vivam ultra, sed descendam in infernum plorans. Victoria: Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei from Officium Defunctorum Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria Tua. Hosanna in excelsis. Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. Hosanna in excelsis. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: Absalom, my son, Would that I had died instead of you, my son, Absalom? I shall live no more, but go down to hell, weeping. Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts. Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the dona eis requiem. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona eis requiem. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona eis requiem sempiternam. Alonso Lobo: Versa est in luctum world, grant them rest. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant them rest. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant them eternal rest. Versa est in luctum cithara mea, et organum meum in vocem flentium. Parce mihi Domine, nihil enim sunt dies mei.. My harp is tuned to mourning, and my organ shall speak with the voice of them that weep. Spare me, O Lord, for my days are truly as nothing..

6 Victoria: Responsorium: Libera me from Officium Defunctorum Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna, in die illa tremenda quando coeli movendi sunt et terra dum veneris judicare saeculum per ignem. Tremens factus sum ego et timeo, dum discussio venerit atque ventura ira. Dies illa, dies irae, calamitatis et miseriae, dies magna et amara valde. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Kyrie eleison. Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death, on that fearful day when the heavens are moved and the earth when you will come to judge the world by fire. I am made to tremble, and I fear, when the desolation shall come, and also the coming wrath. That day, the day of wrath, calamity, and misery, that terrible and exceedingly bitter day. Give them eternal rest, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine on them. Lord have mercy. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison. Heinrich Isaac: Innsbruck, ich muß dich lassen Innsbruck, ich muß dich lassen, ich fahr dahin mein Straßen in fremde Land dahin. Mein Freud ist mir genommen, die ich nit weiß bekommen, wo ich im Elend bin. Groß Leid muß ich jetzt tragen, das ich allein tu klagen dem liebsten Buhlen mein. Ach Lieb, nun lass mich Armen im Herzen dein erbarmen, daß ich muß dannen sein. Mein Trost ob allen Weiben, dein tu ich ewig bleiben, stet treu, der Ehren fromm. Nun muß dich Gott bewahren, in aller Tugend sparen, bis daß ich wiederkomm. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. Innsbruck, I must leave you, I am going on my way into a foreign land. My joy is taken from me, I know not how to regain it, while in such misery. I must now endure great pain, which I confide only to my dearest love. O beloved, find pity in your heart for me, that I must part from you. My comfort above all other women, I shall always be yours, forever faithful, in honor true. May the good Lord protect you and keep you in your virtue until I return. Robert Morton: Le souvenir de vous me tue Le souvenir de vous me tue, mon seul bien, quant je ne vous voy, car je vous jure sur ma foy, sans vous ma liess est perdue. Quant vous estes hors de ma vue, je me plains et dis a par moy: Le souvenir (etc.) Seule demeure despourveue, d ame nul confort ne reçoy, et si seuffre sans fair effroy, jusques a vostre revenue. The memory of you kills me, my only joy, when I do not see you, for I swear to you upon my faith, without you my happiness is lost. When you are out of my sight, I grieve and say to myself: The memory (etc.) I remain alone and desolate, I receive no comfort from anyone, and thus suffer quietly, until your return..

7 Thomas Tallis: Lamentations I William Byrd: Ne irascaris Domine / Civitas sancti tui Aleph. Incipit lamentatio Ieremiae prophetae: Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena populo: facta est quasi vidua domina gentium, princeps provinciarum facta est sub tributo. Beth. Plorans ploravit in nocte, et lacrimae eius in maxillis eius: non est qui consoletur eam ex omnibus caris eius: omnes amici eius spreverunt eam, et facti sunt ei inimici. Ierusalem, Ierusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum. Ne irascaris Domine satis, et ne ultra memineris iniquitatis nostrae. Ecce respice populus tuus omnes nos. Civitas sancti tui facta est deserta. Sion deserta facta est, Jerusalem desolata est. Leonhard Lechner: Si bona suscepimus Si bona suscepimus de manu Domini, mala autem quare non sustineamus?. Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit; sicut Domino placuit, ita factum est: sit nomen Domini benedictum. Nudus egressus sum de utero matris mei, Here beginneth the lamentation of Jeremiah the prophet: Aleph. How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people How is she become as a widow She that was great among nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary Beth. She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, return unto the Lord thy God. Be not angry, O Lord, and remember our iniquity no more. Behold, we are all your people. Your holy city has become a wilderness. Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem has been made desolate. If we have received good things from the hand of the Lord, why should we not endure bad things?. The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away: as it has pleased the Lord, so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord. Naked came I out of my mother s womb, et nudus revertar illuc. Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit; sicut Domino placuit, ita factum est: sit nomen Domini benedictum. [Fiat voluntas Domini.] and naked shall I return there. The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away: as it has pleased the Lord, so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord. [The will of the Lord be done.]

8 Heather Ahrenholz Mike Byrley Bill Chin Tom Crawford PERFORMERS Stephanie Sheffield Culica Matthew Dean Tamara Ghattas Joe Labozetta Amy Mantrone Jessica Melger Keith Murphy Peter Olson ABOUT THE ENSEMBLE And the servants also of Huram, and the servants of Solomon, which brought gold from Ophir, brought algum trees and precious stones. And the king made of the algum trees terraces to the house of the LORD, and to the king s palace, and harps and psalteries for singers; and there were none such seen before in the land of Judah. (2 Chronicles 9:10 11) Founded in 2010, King Solomon s Singers is an ensemble dedicated to the performance of Renaissance polyphony and chant. The members of the ensemble are professional and semi-professional singers from the Chicago area members of ensembles such as Chicago Chorale, Schola Antiqua of Chicago, The Oriana Singers, The Newberry Consort, The Chicago Early Music Consort, and Chicago a cappella who share a love of this particular repertoire. For more information, visit our website at or find us on Facebook. SPECIAL THANKS King Solomon s Singers wish to thank St. Josaphat Parish and First United Church of Oak Park for providing rehearsal space, Cathryn Crawford for help with concert logistics, and especially the clergy and staff of Rockefeller Memorial Chapel for including the ensemble in this important occasion and hosting us at their magnificent space.